


In Time

by larkflower



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Bad Future, Multi, but a little bit of hope too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 18:05:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2119596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkflower/pseuds/larkflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anything can change, except for you and me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Time

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers up until Chapter 21, and vague spoilers for the Future Past 3 DLC.  
> A re-imagining told in snippets of a world where fate was less kind.

You awaken to this: The bright sky. The tickling sensation of grass against your back. Two people staring down at you with slightly bewildered curiosity.

One is a stranger, but the other is inexplicably familiar. As he offers you his hand to help you up, you think that you have known him from some time ago. But though you try to think back in time, your memory is one vast blank, your thoughts traverse emptiness, except for one faint, impossible imprint of a dream that you push back into oblivion.

When you take his hand, you are sure of it. He and you are being drawn together.

He pulls you up, so that you are a little too close for two people who just met, but you don’t care; you are too captivated by his eyes, which are deep blue and overwhelm you with a strange sense of peace.

Nothing makes sense – you feel dizzy – but you see Chrom’s gaze soften as he looks at you, inches away, and though your legs are weak and you are about to collapse again, you feel light as air.

\---

When does it really begin? An offhand remark, a lingering glance here and there, an accidental brush of hands. Once, he jokingly offers to carry you while on the road and you nearly burst imagining it. Soon you are unintentionally memorizing the way his body moves as he dashes forward towards enemies, leaps into the air, sweeps Falchion in graceful arcs. You see him fight all the time; after all, he says he fights best with you, says you alone can properly coordinate with his moves.

Even if you bury yourself in strategies and war histories, his presence is constant. He wants to talk with you about travel routes, battle plans, and everything else under the sun. Afternoons are almost always spent with him, lazing around camp and making idle chatter, or training and laughing uproariously with Lissa as he smashes and crashes into everything in the nearby vicinity. You forget semblance of dignity and nobility. You forget that you are nothing and he is this country’s exalted.

\---

Friends do talk about things like romance. Sometimes you try to prattle on to him about him and girls and his overall magnetic properties with pegasus knights, but he just laughs and turns his head to stare absentmindedly into nothing, leaving you to drift into flustered silence, ignoring the hopeful thoughts bubbling up within you.

You think that every step you make out on the battlefield practically gives you away. The way your eyes constantly flit back to his figure even as you are shouting orders to your other friends, the way you are never far behind, the way you are always ready to lunge forward and intercept anyone who dares so much as look at him. Not that you can help it - the two of you have fallen into a pattern of fighting side by side, always managing to drift together in battle. Justifications aside, you still feel guilty that you’re compromising your duty by giving him such great priority; however, it’s clear everyone assumes that it’s for another obvious reason – he, after all, is the irreplaceable commander.

\---

But there is no time for thoughts like those in the shadow of a looming war.

He begins to look more tired as the days drag on. Everyone does, to some extent, but his burden is the greatest. Frederick reminds you both that you are young and do not yet truly understand what true turmoil is. But you can see it coming faster, and it scares you that this is not like a little skirmish: you can hardly begin to predict what will happen.

It begins to gnaw at you like the brief, staccato-like bursts of fear you get when he jumps in front of you, striking away arrows, swords, axes, anything that could harm you. You wish you could do the same - swing your arms through the air and shield him from the advancing horrors. You would fling them away, toss them far into the sea, where they won't be able to so visibly weigh down on his every movement, his every word.

\---

When Emmeryn dies, you see him cry for the first time, and then many times afterwards, as images of cliffs and piercing skies and crumbling skulls encroach on his vision. You also embrace him for the first time, pulling him into your arms, holding him tightly and letting him cry soundlessly into your shoulder. You don’t mind that your clothes sometimes get soaked from tears, and that the others are beginning to wonder why you keep leaving his room at late hours of the night; you are only concerned with the hope that holding him like this might protect him from the furious chaos that is approaching. You are only two children in a storm, and for the first time since you met him in that field, he seems young and breakable.   

\---

He does begin to smile again, but he has no choice. This war is not afraid to outpace him.

Tentatively, you ease back into light conversations and comfortable banter, gradually reverting to your easy, unassuming interactions. Everyone else follows in a collective exhale of relief. Still, sometimes, in a late hour of the night, he comes back to you alone, and you lie there holding each other, small against how gigantic the night sky is.

\---

Somehow, in the midst of careful strategies and strenuous preparations for the march to Plegia, something changes besides the howling winds growing more vicious as Regna Ferox descends deeper into their winter. He refuses to meet your gaze. He takes an odd interest in training by himself. He makes a habit of making small talk with anyone in the near vicinity but you, even if that’s Virion, for gods’ sake. Of course you would confront him when you finally catch a glimpse of him quickly turning a corner upon seeing you from afar, and his avoidance is cemented with evidence.

You didn’t mean to do it by barging into his tent blathering about travel details, but it happens anyway. You also don't mean for yourself to descend so quickly into rueful accusations and panicked assumptions, but you can't help it.

You end up running out of breath, halting to a defiant stop before suddenly realizing again how young you both are when you see his expression, hesitant and awkward. When he opens his mouth to speak – well, to be accurate, babble - you picture yourself facing an incoming tide, because something is about to change.

The truth comes out eventually, dazed and flustered. The tide crashes down and washes the shore away.

Some changes turn out for the better.

When he kisses you lightly, you feel sunlight on your face. It does little to ward off the reality of impending carnage, but you still make quick, eager promises to each other, of the next reality you will create in a world without a war.

\---

In the haze of the desert, battered by the swirling sands, you think that it is he who has created your world.

\---

Everything has an end. This war ends, and the Mad King dies. The victory finally comes, but celebration is muted, if existent at all – the sacrifices and the bloodshed have greater presence than the triumph, as does the inevitable rebuilding.

You sneak quick glances at him throughout the planning for the journey home, wondering if his imminent rise to the throne might be more terrifying than a war. He is going to inherit a country’s worth of burdens. The promises you two made are dwarfed by this huge reality.

But when it is finally just the two of you, he picks you up and spins you around in the air, and you laugh, not quite weightless, but certainly above life and its troubles.

 

* * *

 

 

Quiet nights where you are the only two people in the universe – escaping for time and freedom in busy streets, tranquil forests, windy meadows – your head against his shoulder, his promises whispered into your hair – a sea of cheering people at a wedding – brief, familiar glances across courtyards and spacious halls – a daughter’s gentle grasp around your finger -

Then a few years’ worth of peace is shattered in an instant, and you plunge into war once again, together, like always.

 

* * *

 

 

War is senseless and brutal. You know this already though, as you slash and burn your way through armies upon armies. It’s not war this time that scares you; it’s the pervasive doubts that keep mercilessly rushing at you. Deep in a dark castle, you realize you were never nothing, that no loss of memory truly voids the past. He tells you it doesn’t matter, that you are yourself. The self that he brought out of emptiness in a field from long ago.

\---

He is wrong, and you discover that you are not just a child of destruction, you are destruction itself. You start by destroying the hope of a nation. Does it matter now?

You feel brittle, travelling along with these people you just condemned. For the first time since he found you, you feel alien to the world he created. When you dismount your horse in the middle of marching, to collapse on a dusty road and stay away from your betrayed, you wonder if you should take up Falchion yourself and drive it through your own heart. As you stand in the middle of the road, body unwilling to rejoin your friends, you see him running over, speaking to you, but you don’t know what he is trying to say. Everything has an end.

\---

You come back, but are left with nothing but apologies and tears. Everything is in ruins, the world’s only protection gone, given away with your own hands.

He tries to comfort you, hold you, but every time he touches you, you can’t help but be overcome with immense guilt, thinking about the fell dragon that roars through your veins. What if the world ends, you as its destroyer? Not even his warm arms, tight around your shoulders, can fully take away the constant worry that now eats at you, interspersed with the replaying images of you snatching the Fire Emblem – Ylisse’s treasure, Emmeryn’s last gift - and putting it into the hands of a father who seeks to crush everyone you love. Most of all the one who presses soft kisses to your lips and whispers soothing words against the crook of your neck when each night you wake from horrific nightmares - because you begin to dream again, the dream that you thought you had forgotten: a dream in which Chrom crumples and falls onto harsh stone, in a dark temple - 

And even though you are the bringer of his apocalypse, he never blames you, even when you insist that he should. He only gives that same kind gaze that reminds you of sunny fields and vivid skies, and then takes his hands in yours.

\---

Somehow, you knew that in the end, the final battle would come down to you and him, fighting as one.

“Stay with us,” he shouts, and you strike.

\---

Validar falls and you are overcome by a moment of triumph and elation. Perhaps you really do belong with them all, that crazed ideal he keeps repeating. Destiny might have no hold, you think, as he rushes over to you, smiling widely, scanning your face with an intense joy.

“We can rest easy now, at long last -”

Sparks crackle across your vision, you see red. And the world fractures.

\---

His eyes widen in shock, and the rush of raw pain that burns you is incomprehensible as you watch him stumble back, the soft grasp of his hand on your shoulder vanishing, leaving a chilling nothing. You don’t understand. You can’t understand this scene. You feel gutted, like you are the one who is dying, the one who is struggling to breathe, wavering between life and death. Everything is spiraling around and rushing away from you as if you are. Everything is going cold, even as your hand burns with the electricity that just murdered him.

“This… This is not your fault.” He is fading, growing pale, you are awash with horror -

“Please go.”

But you don’t go, because darkness washes over you and you are left a screaming nonentity in your own head, falling into an unceasing, suffocating void.

 

* * *

 

 

The deep blue of his eyes, of his hair, it colors the words you repeat to yourself, over and over. You begin to forget the image of sky and the smell of grass, but you will never let yourself forget the sound of his name, even in a world of unending silence.

Existence now, is like an uneasy slumber. In fragile dreams repeatedly broken by images of bloodshed and terror, you and he walk in empty corridors through crowds of dancing light and shadow, your steps marked with resounding echoes that you cannot hear anymore.

He walks slightly ahead, always. How many times, do you reach out with nonexistent hands to pull him back? But your hands never manage to catch his and he never turns to face you, because sunny fields and vivid skies do not exist in this purgatory. 

Even though you have no feeling anymore, the motions of stabbing and of lightning coursing through your palms are sharper than ever, as is the hollow thud of a body against stone and something bright draining away.

\---

In spring, you both took Lucina to a great plain full of tall, golden grass, watched her giggle as she tore at away at tiny wildflowers beginning to sprout. Under a towering cloud in the sky, he gave you a small smile and said that, at that moment, he felt at peace. Lucina tottered over and smiled up at you, radiantly. Were their faces always shrouded that way in shadow?

\---

You grow still, everything dulls... running out of memories to replay... time extends, an inconceivable expanse -

\---

Sometimes Grima lets you see through your old eyes. It’s strange, breaking the din of silence with the chilling calm of slaughter. From far away, you watch cities topple, vast fields razed, people burn and die. Some of them are your friends; in every ashen, hopeless face you see the ghost of him, and all that you ruined. There is no one who shouts calm orders anymore, no unyielding figure who leads a charge, and the Shepherds' resistance is listless and damned as they are cut down one by one. Each time, you struggle to break out into the world you are being shown, mutely screaming and straining with all your thoughts the same:  _Let me out let me out let me out –_ but you are completely imprisoned, helpless to do anything but watch everything come to an end, immobile despite your thoughts growing into a constantly accelerating blur.  _Let me out let me out let me out – please –_

Then, impossibly, one day as Grima shows you one more desperate battle, you see a flash of blue hair, familiarly defiant eyes, the silver glint of shoulder armor –

\- and when he approaches, when you feel the surge of murderous rage from the fell dragon, you come crashing through, into a vivid world, the thunderous sounds of war finally resounding clearly in your ears.

\---

He is not the Chrom you knew. As you feel Grima’s knowledge and enormous power flood through you as you regain connection to your body, you become aware that he isn’t a part of this world, because the part of you that is a fell dragon knows that he comes from an alternate time. But he is Chrom, strong and well, and you cannot help being overcome with happiness at a Chrom full of life, until everything is quickly replaced by dread as you realize that he is about to die, over again, and you are about to kill him once more. His eyes, your beautiful deep blue, are going to dim again with that pained shock, and his body will tilt forwards and –

The image of Chrom’s limp body collapsing onto the ground causes the control that had been trickling into yourself begin to absolutely flood through you, accompanied by a sharpening sensation of physical existence.

But as your body returns, something else inside of you begins to fade, even as you are finally able to open your mouth and speak.

You tell him to run, to get away from you, to leave, and your mind is frantically trying to pull together, trying to draw up the vile power inside of you, to seize control and force him to safety somehow, because –

“I can’t bear to watch you die again.”

And there is a flash of instant recognition on his face, but he barely manages to choke out his disbelief and reach out his hand to you, when something finally connects in your weakening mind, and with the last of your strength, he is gone to somewhere you do not know.

Then at last, so are you. You feel everything fade as you too, try to grasp a hand that is already gone.

\---

_“If we are all bound by these invisible ties, I thank the gods it’s with you.”_

Emptiness, neither violent nor taunting like before… just emptiness…

\---

The world…

Everything that you are…

\---

You awaken to this: A blinding light. Soft clouds. A kind pair of familiar blue eyes and a warm smile.

He calls your name, and the light seems softer. There are people coming closer from afar, the voices of the dead are approaching, but they are excited and joyous. You smell grass and wind, and finally understand where you are.

Once more, Chrom reaches his hand out. And with lifetimes of familiarity, you do the same, repeat the motion that haunted you when you hovered between existence and nothingness.

“Welcome back. It’s over now.”

When your hands touch, you are as light as air again, and you follow him, into an endless sky, a timeless peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in the Future Past 3 timeline, but could work for any bad timeline. Avatar is left ambiguous because no matter what, these two will always be two halves of the same whole, right?  
> I purposefully left it so you could interpret this as male Avatar too, even though that has other… extramarital implications… ahem. You know, going for the “in any version of the universe, any version of you” kind of thing.
> 
> Lastly, thanks for reading!


End file.
